Missouri is a land of borrowed names, crafted to bring the world just a little bit closer: Versailles, Rome, Cairo, New London, Athens, Carthage, Alexandria, Lebanon, Cuba, Japan, Santa Fe, Cleveland, Canton, California, Caledonia, New Caledonia, Mexico, Louisiana. And then there’s Paris—our home.
There are also places with amusing names that bring a smile: Licking, Fair Play, Strain, Elmo, Peculiar, Shook, Lone Jack, Butts, Lupus, Moody, Clover, Polo, and the T towns that always cap my list—Turtle, Tightwad, Tulip, and Tea.
When sleeplessness strikes, I challenge myself to recall as many names as I can, an old game I played with my parents while gazing out the car window at the rolling brown waters of the Mississippi.
Tonight, however, something has stirred me from sleep. The hum of the air conditioner fills the silence, and outside, it’s dark and still, save for the distant sound of trains. The clock reads 2:30 AM. Sleep seems elusive. Where am I? This isn’t my apartment; the familiar sounds of sirens and traffic aren’t here. No neon lights shine through the blinds. I’m home, in Paris, Missouri—a town with a dwindling population of 1,246. I remind myself that I’m here for just a few more days or weeks, until Carol, the kind-hearted neighbor helping to care for my mother, recovers from her surgery. Or until my mother can transition to an assisted living facility. Until things change here on Sherwood Road, and my mother is gone, leaving me to close up the house.
“Who cranked up the air conditioning so high? He’s trying to freeze me out,” I hear Betty’s voice from the hallway.
And there she is, all ninety years of her, hair in curlers, chuckling to herself for no apparent reason, peeking into the guest room where I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to sleep. It’s the last room in America with shag carpet, and I’ve found what I think might be a high school toenail embedded in the fibers.
On the spare bed rests a quilt adorned with stars and crescent moons, and figures of children holding hands along the edges, stitched with the names of long-gone farm women, including my great-aunt Mabel. In this space, I’ve found remnants of the past—Christmas wrappings, Betty’s uncle Oscar’s desk, and the very bed where I once slept with my grandmother, lulled by her snores and the creaking of the furnace. My grandmother’s home in Madison—just ten miles away—was known as the House of Many Chimneys. She tended to her garden of pink roses, fretting over them even as her eyesight faded.
The hallway light is on; Betty has been raiding the kitchen for a midnight snack after waking to use the bathroom or from dreams that stir her. Something—her thoughts, her memories—plagues my mother at night. A light sleeper, she pads around the house in thick white socks, clearing her throat, slightly swaying as she moves, brewing coffee that will be cold by morning, and adjusting her version of order. After she returns to bed, I try to light her path to the kitchen, leaving on a lamp in my father’s office and another in the foyer to guide her through the darkness.
“Are you awake?” she asks.
“I am now,” I reply.
Betty, who recently rummaged through my suitcase, flips on the overhead light in my room, peering in like a camp counselor checking for mischief, suspecting I might be scheming. She’s vigilant. I can’t blame her; I’m an unlikely guardian. Just a month ago, I thought the Medicare doughnut hole was a breakfast special for seniors.
It’s a struggle to rein her in. Her will is as strong as ever. “It’s a hot day, but I’m going to that sale,” she mumbled last week in her sleep, as temperatures soared. She jabbed her finger in the air as if placing a bid in a dream. She often lashes out at me, sometimes swatting the air if I get too close. On tough days, I can’t seem to please her. Carol, who has experience in nursing homes, says that elderly individuals often direct their frustration at those closest to them, as they grapple with their fading identities. But I believe Betty’s irritability is a mask for her embarrassment at needing help. When I do something for her, she looks away, unused to depending on anyone.
“I was worried,” she says. “You mentioned last night that you couldn’t sleep. I feared you’d have another restless night.” Her gaze is intense.
“I’m fine. I’m asleep right now,” I assure her, “Talking in my sleep.”
“Once again in bed in your clothes,” she observes.
“I dozed off reading,” I explain. In truth, I sleep in my clothes, ready to respond to any emergencies—falls, strokes, or sudden cries. She seems so fragile when I tuck her in. I keep the ambulance number and emergency room contact on my bedside table.
“It’s not good to sleep in your clothes… The Appeal didn’t come today,” she complains.
Our local paper, which covers community happenings, charity events, and church news—including the “Movement of the Spirit” at the Full Gospel Church—has been sporadic lately, likely due to staffing shortages at the post office. This kind of delay sends my mother into a tailspin; she wants things when she wants them.
“Did someone from the church call today? I can’t find my other shoe, the Mephisto.”
I promise we’ll search in the morning, and for a moment, I catch a glimpse of the old Betty, my longtime confidante, who rarely surfaces anymore—almost a smile.
In St. Louis, as we turn off Skinker onto Delmar near the University City gates, Betty likes to point out the spot where, as a young woman working at Union Electric, she waited for the streetcar. She seldom talks about the past, yet she cherishes that memory. In the 1940s, after the war, she was a striking young woman with wavy brown hair, fresh from the “Miss Legs” contest at the university. I envision her at that old streetcar stop, wearing a cast-off coat and gazing down the tracks toward Webster Groves, where she lived with her aunt Nona. She radiated innocence and excitement for her new city life, surrounded by other women in elegant dresses—fashions her mother never allowed her to buy. I sometimes wonder if she wishes she had boarded that streetcar for a different destiny.
By the time Betty realized her intelligence and beauty could open doors, she had already closed too many to return. “I just wanted a house with a few nice things,” she once confessed to me. “That was my little dream.”